To Live in a Dead World
by Sepharad
Summary: A famous musical artist is losing a battle with a debilitating disease in the world of Final Fantasy VI. His spirits were broken when the world was ravaged, and now he reflects on his life in his final days.
1. Prologue

**To Live in a Dead World**

                        __

Pain fills each dismal day   
                            And haunts my fitful sleep.   
                            Ultimately, all must pay   
                            The charge that Death will reap. 

                        Here I lay, with naught to say;   
                            Whose fault is it but mine?   
                            Here I stay, in my last day,   
                            And . . . 

                        . . . 

~~ 

_Bah!_

In disgust, I hurl the pen across the room. Or, I try to do so, but the quill pen's large, billowy feather of bright pink quickly traps the stale, sickly air that tried to pass under and through it, and it falls to the ground not five paces from my bed. Truth be told, though, I probably could not have thrown it much farther even without the feather. Such was the effect of my current state of health. As much as I hated to admit it to myself—although I had to do it, again and again—my sickness had affected me that much. 

It had come on slowly at first; indeed, doctors suspected that I had had the strange disease for a year or more before it started to display its evil powers, and it had taken another two years for it to prove itself as dangerous as they had feared. More dangerous. 

For the first few months after the diagnosis, I had seemed fine, even to myself. Truly, others had noticed the changes in me—the sickly weight loss, the wan complexion, the increasing rapidity at which I grew fatigued—before even I myself saw them. Then, once I took notice, the transformation had seemed to speed up dramatically. I became unable to stay up and about for too long at a time without extended rest. Later, I would not even be able to _stand_ for a few minutes without growing dizzy and needing rest. After a few months more, I was forced to spend most of my days sleeping. 

The loss of energy is only one effect of my damning illness. I cannot keep food down any longer, and what I do manage to eat and digest seems to do little to keep my body from decaying into an emaciated shell. My skin has become so painfully sensitive that it hurts to wear clothing, and yet even in the hot summer I freeze without many layers of it. At just under forty years of age, I am a feeble, skeletal version of my former self. 

For a time, though, I had maintained high spirits. I tried every new medicine that was brought to me, and tried to continue on as I normally would, optimistic that I would eventually be cured. Even as my condition worsened, and it became impossible for me to perform live concerts—which had been my favourite part of life as a successful musician in a massively successful band—I still plodded on and waited for a magical cure. 

Then the world broke, and my spirits with it. 

Like most common people, I have no idea of the details. I know not _how_ the world came to be as it now is, only that it is a bleak and dead place. We that survived the cataclysm find that we are trapped in a world where nature is inanimate, and civilization all but completely crumbled. No crops will grow. People live in poverty who but a year ago were wealthy. People who only a year ago never had want for anything, starve to death in fields that should be filled with corn or potatoes, or cattle. 

I quickly found that it was not a world in which I wanted to live. And when that happened, my life was over. My illness continued to steal away one aspect of my lifestyle after another, until now. I am a vegetable. 

The disease has taken a toll on my mental faculties as well. While I can still communicate as eloquently as ever I could, I have been debilitated in one most abhorrent fashion. 

I can no longer write songs. 

Well, good songs anyway. I can still write, when I have the energy to lift a pen, and I am still master of my vocabulary. But simple words and musical notes on paper do not a song make. 

It seems to me a strange thing that I, at one time considered to be among the greatest songwriters in the world, could so expressively and poignantly convey emotions in my songs when those emotions were in the abstract (that is to say, when I did not actually feel the emotions myself, but only pretended to for the sake of writing a song about them), but now that I am actually caught up in the torrent of emotion that only comes with the knowledge that the end is near, I simply cannot put those feelings into music. 

_Phaw!_ Thinking about my music now always pangs me, and not just because I can no longer write. Oh, that I could sing again! 

. . . 

Am I right to hesitate? Do I dare hark back to the days when my band mates and I thrilled audiences the world over with our energy, our grandiose showmanship? When we filled every venue, from taverns to auditoriums, to the grand Jidoor Opera House itself? Why should I recall those times now? I have long since become too sick to perform live concerts, and more recently it has even become impossible for me to record record albums. I know that the memories of days when I could do those things will only bring about deeper sorrow than already rends my soul. And it is especially hard, with the knowledge that I brought it upon myself, in a way. I was a completely unwitting victim of the virus—it is a relatively new disease, from what I understand; I had never even heard of it before I contracted it, and even the 'experts' don't know much about it. 

Perhaps if I could put pen to paper, record my experiences, so that some other poor fool might be spared my corrupted lot. . . . But there lies my pen on the tiled floor, out of my reach. I might have the energy to rise and retrieve it, but what would the point be? Would I not become confounded, all the more upset? Wallowing in self-pity as I do (and I freely admit that this is so, but cannot do a thing about it), how would I fare? After all, how can a man hope to compose memoirs if he cannot even think of a good rhyme for the word "mine" in a song? Well, besides the obvious ones; nine, fine, line, dine, pine. . . . And how can I hope to write anything at all when I am deprived of the ability to properly throw my pen? For surely an author has the right to throw his pen against a wall in frustration. It is a right he must have, to preserve his sanity. 

_Preserve it for what? _

Hmm. A dreary thought, no? I am growing used to them. As of late, they are all that fill my mind. 

Well. If I must lay here, a living corpse in a cadaverous world, with a head full of dreary thoughts, I deserve to have a little satisfaction along with them, I think. Yes, remembering those old times would be satisfying, if ultimately painful. 

Oh well. I can stand a bit more pain. 

Do I dare lose myself in my memories? Will I ever find my way back to my life? 

Such as it is, do I want to? 

My mind wanders, as if adrift on a wind which blows the covering of dust from pictures in my mind that have not been seen for much too long. I see the images of my life, and I think back on them. Some I think on fondly, others . . . not so fondly. But I continue to move backward in time, and more images flash through my mind. 

I remember in every detail the office of the doctor who told me that I was sick. I recall the inflection of his voice; he delivered the news as if I were a small child who required the greatest and gentlest care, rather than a man who could handle bad tidings. 

Too painful a memory. I think back further. I can see and hear the roaring crowds at our first concert at the Jidoor Opera House. 

A musician knows he's made it when he plays the Opera House. 

But I don't stay there. I move back further yet, to one of our many concerts for drunkards in a small town tavern. Still further back, to when I first met my future band mates at the university. So I finally arrived at the beginning of my story. 

No . . . no, I haven't. No, I must go back to the very beginning's beginning, to when the seeds of my music were planted. By a mother, and a piano, in the coastal city of South Figaro. 

There is where my tale begins. . . . 

***************


	2. Chapter 1: Exploration

**Exploration**

_Just what can this strange thing be?_

I stared at the giant device for time, trying in vain to identify it. It had just appeared suddenly in our house one day, and I had no idea what it was, or for what purpose it had come to my livingroom. All I knew was that with my father gone to work for the day, I was the man of the house, and I had to figure out where this intruder had come from. Even having accepted that responsibility, though, I was at a loss as to what I should do. The thing presented several major problems. 

Firstly, it was huge; even one such as myself, a lofty man with almost six years of life experience under my belt, had to strain my neck to look up at it. Of course, being the resourceful and crafty individual I was, I had solved that problem. I discovered that by climbing onto the unusual backless chair that slid out from under the thing, I could get a better view of it. 

And such was my position then, on my hands and knees atop the backless chair, staring across at what appeared to be the thing's teeth. I could think of no other possible way to describe the long row of shining white parts that lay before my eyes, prominent against the dark brown of the thing's body. I was disgusted by the monster's hygiene, though, for stuck between every few white teeth I could see a thin mass of black. 

I didn't want to know what the thing had eaten to get its teeth so dirty. 

Looking up, above the intimidating chompers, I could see naught but more of the thing's brown body. I could see that the crest was close, but bent over as I was, I could not tell if atop the chestnut physique there were eyes or arms or whatever other oddities one might expect such a demon to possess. 

_But if I stood up, I could see it. . . ._ The thought popped into my head suddenly, and it seemed like an ingenious plan. As I looked down from my perch, though, the idea lost some of its original lustre. I knew that I was not really that far above the ground; indeed, I was taller than the backless chair. Nevertheless, the distance seemed greater than it was, and the peril more intense. 

But I was a brave man, and I had a duty to perform. My curiosity quickly overcame my good judgement. I first eased myself up into a crouch, with feet and hands on the glossy brown surface of the backless chair, then with a deep breath I rose to my feet. 

_I've done it!_ I was ecstatic. But I remembered that I had a job to do, and so I took my first look at the top of the beast. 

Alone atop the monstrosity sat a linen doily, with a small tan stain on some of the threads. I recognized it as the same ornament that had once graced our kitchen table. 

I felt cheated, until I realized that the thing may have stolen the doily. Perhaps it meant to lure my mother into its unclean jaws with her own crochet work. 

_The fiend!_

Lost in a blaze of hatred for the thing, I neglected to keep my footing true. Fear replaced hatred as I teetered on the brink. It seemed that the monster had defeated me with the allure of its backless chair. 

I would have screamed as I fell, had it not been muffled in the skirts of the person who caught me. 

***************


End file.
